Documents / Official release

box Incident Summaries 173-233

U.S. Department of War · 144 pages · text by GLM-OCR

This Air Materiel Command file, released by the U.S. Department of War, holds Incident Summary Sheets 173 through 233, sent under a 1949 transmittal. Most of the sheets record sightings of unidentified aerial objects in 1948 and early 1949. They cover Santa Fe, New Mexico, San Pablo, California, Honolulu, Kentwood, Louisiana, and Jackson, Mississippi. Each sheet gives the observer's details and the object's size, speed and shape, and often an investigator's note on how reliable the witness seemed. The file ends with a blank guide for investigating reports, including radar sightings.

From the source:Release of 2026-05-08 Incident: N/A, N/A. NARA Record Group 38, catalogue id 143685. Each of these incident summaries includes a "Check-List - Unidentified Flying Objects" that contains details about the incident. Many summaries also include witness lists or statements and other narrative reports or descriptions.

  • p. 69 …and Address of Observer PFG Robert R: Anderson; AF-1107513 of AATS; APO 406, N. Y…
  • p. 70 …out an object to PFC Robert R. Anderson who described it as being round, orange in…

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At approximately 2200 hours Lt Henry G. Combs sighted an object flying on a 360° from West to East over Andrews AF Base. The object had one continuous glowing white light. Combs thought it was an aircraft with the wing navigation lights turned off or burned out. He then made a pass to check. Object then took evasive action. First contact established at 1700 feet over Andrews AF Base. When object started taking evasive action, Combs switched wing and tail navigation lights off. Maneuvering his ship so that his exhaust flame would not be noticed in an effort to get the object on his left he proceeded to close in but the object quickly flew up and over his aircraft. Then Combs attempted to maneuver the object between his ship and the light of the moon. This was done by making very very tight 360° turns with flaps down while making a steady climb. Object was able to turn inside of Combs' aircraft even under this condition. Another amazing feature was the quick variation of airspeed from 80 MPH to 500 or 600 MPH. Combs remained in contact with the object for some 10 minutes with the object between the lights of Washington, D. C. and his aircraft. He could only see an oblong ball with one light and no wings and no exhaust flame. Trying to close in again he remained in sight of it up to 6000 feet, then down to 3500 feet to 4000 feet but it always easily evaded him. Then object and Combs flew climbed up to 7500 feet. Combs pulled back up sharply and came up underneath the object within 300 to 400 feet. He then turned his landing lights on it. It had a very dull gray glow to it and was oblong in shape as mentioned before. Object then performed a very tight curve and headed for the East coast at about 500 to 600 MPH.

Witnesses agree that (1) Object was highly maneuverable. (2) Seemed aware of the presence of a following aircraft (3) Capable of almost vertical flight (4) Was smaller in size that T-6 type aircraft.

Witnesses were uncertain as to whether source of light observed eminated from entire object or was exhaust type in nature.

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About this file

Official release, from the pursue collection. The PDF is mirrored here; the original link is above. The text was read from the page images by GLM-OCR; expect the odd misread word. 144 pages are in the text index: search them above, or from the library's search.